Subject: Re: superior(?) programming languages From: Erik Naggum <news@naggum.no> Date: 1996/12/18 Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3059867157651487@naggum.no> * Adam Alpern | I've written many hundreds of thousands of lines of Common Lisp without | ever calling eval once - and this was in dynamic, end-user programmable | environments (class & prototype based visual programming systems, highly | parallel blackboard systems with integrated rule engines), defining new | classes and methods on the fly, etc... then it should be entirely safe for you to evaluate (fmakunbound 'eval) and report how well your system works, or how well you work. right? if not, please explain what you mean by "without ever calling eval once". just because somebody else does it for you, doesn't mean you don't use it. otherwise, you could just have a "designated eval caller" (a.k.a "the fall guy") in any Lisp community, and he could write a wrapper with another name which you could call. washing your hands of all eval, you can now use this function, instead. this is like some orthodox Jews who are forbidden to do work that involves machinery of any kind during the Sabbath, and thus can't turn on electric lights. to solve this problem, they have devised a stick that they can use to turn the switch for them. it's not machinery, and they do get light. it's also quite symptomatic and tragic that you didn't see the point in what you deleted as "dogmatic flamage": _work_ hard and be prepared to sacrifice a lot to realize the dreams you take seriously, don't just sit there and _whine_ about a life you refuse to change. now, I suppose you disagree with _this_, too. #\Erik -- users should be computer-friendly.